The Crossware Coldfire Development Suite is also available as part of a ColdFire Development Kit that in addition includes a Coldfire USB to BDM hardware debugging interface and saves you more than $160 over buying the kit's components separately.

The Crossware ColdFire Development Suite for Windows 2000 and Windows XP provides a complete environment in which you can develop your ColdFire (CF5307, CF5407, CF5207, CF5208, CF52xx, CF547x and CF548x) programs. It includes Code Creation Wizard support for the MCF5282's CAN controller.

It's all integrated into a seamless, multi-threaded, programmer-friendly environment.

C++ Support

Migrating from C to C++ with the Crossware suite is easy. Adding two instructions to the startup code is sufficient to handle the construction and destruction of global C++ objects. Also, C source files can be switched to the C++ language simply by giving them a .CPP extension.

The Crossware Code Creation Wizards are compatible with both C and C++. For example, if the Code Creation Wizards are used to insert code into a C++ source file, functions that must remain in C -- such as interrupt handlers -- are automatically qualified to keep them as C functions.

Trio MP3 Support

ColdFire Development Suite is able to build the Trio MP3 application software developed by Freescale Semiconductor. Based on the Flex real time operating system, the Trio MP3 application runs on the ColdFire MCF5249 and SCF5250 microprocessors. It includes not only an MP3 decoder and encoder but decoders for Microsoft Windows Media Audio (WMA), Advanced Audio Coding (AAC), Ogg Vorbis and other format files. These files can optionally reside on a hard drive, CD drive or SD card.

Freescale supplies its Trio MP3 application as source code and a set of precompiled libraries. A set of 'makefiles' is also supplied which are used to control the compiler, assembler and linker during the build process. However, an enhancement to the Crossware Embedded Development Studio enables these 'makefiles' to be used to automatically create the files necessary for the application to be built from within Crossware's user-friendly GUI development environment.

For example, you simply browse to the folder containing the master 'makefile' and the Embedded Development Studio will create the completely configured development Workspace in less than 30 seconds. The application then can be immediately built, downloaded and run on the target board.